Alone Together
by Mnemosyne's Elegy
Summary: Yato offers reluctant aid and reveals a little more soul than a god of calamity should, but Bishamon is going to fix her own mistakes this time and save what is left of the Ha clan. But this is the second time she has failed her shinki, and she desperately needs Kazuma's help to rebuild their family the right way this time around.


Bishamon was a fool. She had failed to see what was right under her nose all along, had let darkness grow within her own home, had made all of her old mistakes all over again. She had failed to detect Kugaha's betrayal until it had eaten through the heart of her family. She had turned her back on Kazuma after he had gone to all the trouble to save her. She had caused her shinki pain and set the destruction of the Ha clan into motion. She had been responsible for the deaths of the Ma clan and then blamed Yato so that she didn't have to live with the guilt.

Had she learned nothing? Was it because she had blamed someone else instead of taking responsibility for her own mistakes and learning from them? Now history was repeating itself. The names written on her heart were cracking and disappearing one by one, leaving behind aching holes, and this time she couldn't blame Yato.

She pulled herself to her feet with a slight stagger and cast one last glance over Kazuma, unconscious and bleeding on the ground. She had hurt him and forced her shinki to endure her blight because of her rage-fueled _need_ to kill Yato even though she knew better than to make them suffer with her. The blight ate its way across her skin and burned like fire, but it was nothing compared to the disappearing names shattering her heart.

 _I'm so sorry, Kazuma. I've done it again. I've let them all die again._

She had to save whoever was still left. She couldn't do more here, not while she was so grievously blighted, but she owed it to whatever was left of her family to protect them from the beast Kugaha had unleashed.

She turned away, finally abandoning old grudges in the name of protecting the future, and crossed the courtyard toward the mansion.

"Hey!" Yato called after her. "Are you just running away?"

Bishamon paused and half-turned, eyes flat. "I will no longer run away."

She began walking again, the stone cool and smooth beneath her bare feet. It didn't soothe away the burn of the blight, nor the knowledge of what must be done. Behind her, boots scuffed across the stones and stopped.

"Let's go back, Yato," said the girl. Hiyori.

"No way," Yato said. "If those masked things are out there, I'm involved."

"No." Her voice was soft and trembling with painful understanding. "Yato, you've done enough."

A pause. Bishamon left them to get the hell out of her home, but found her feet dragging to a stop again as a voice called after her.

"Hey, Bishamon!" Yato said. "I don't like you. I think you brought this on yourself. But…if you want, I will slay the ayakashi for you."

Who did he think he was? Perhaps he wasn't the merciless murderer she had cast him as, perhaps he wasn't the one ultimately responsible for the destruction of the Ma clan, but that didn't mean the fires of her resentment didn't still burn bright. He, a lowly god of calamity, lecture her on her mistakes? Rub them in her face while her precious children were dying all around her? How _dare_ he?

But she didn't have time to start another war with him now, not when her shinki needed her.

"I am more than capable of saving them myself," she said flatly.

"I know," he said, his voice equally cold. "But it's not just about protecting who's left, is it? I'm offering to do you a favor."

"What?" She spun back around, eyes narrowing.

Yato stared back, eyes slitted and burning a cold, icy blue. "You do realize that you'll have to cut up your corrupted brats? That you'll have to hear them cry out for you? _Save me, protect me, help me. Master, Mama, Lady._ It's painful enough to lose shinki without listening to their dying cries." His hands tightened around his swords. "You couldn't handle it last time. That's what nearly killed you. So I am offering to do it for you."

Bishamon blinked at him, her glass heart cracking. His face stayed blank, cool.

"Why?" she rasped.

He shrugged. "I'm a heartless, evil god, aren't I?" he asked, his voice cutting through her like icy knives. "What does it matter to me? I've done it before, and I can do it again."

Bishamon couldn't see the complex machinations of his mind, couldn't read what hid behind the flat sheen of his eyes, but she sensed at least half a lie.

"I'll do it myself."

She turned her back on him for good and set her feet back on the warpath. He had saved her before, and she hated it. This time, she would shoulder the burden of her own mistakes. She would protect her remaining shinki and give peace to the souls of the corrupted in the way that she had not been able to do last time. These were her mistakes, her burdens, her responsibilities. Her children. She would fight for them to the end.

Behind her, Yato let out a breath. "She wants to kill me," he muttered quietly enough that she almost missed it. "I shouldn't worry about her." Louder, he said, "Then don't look back. No matter what anyone tells you, this is the right thing to do."

Bishamon's eyes hardened with determination.

She found the last of her remaining shinki cornered in the spring, with the masked ayakashi towering above them. A horrid, skeletal beast bulging with the corrupted spirits of her consumed shinki.

She hadn't used Ruki in forever, not when she had created the most powerful team of shinki imaginable, and it was cruel to use any shinki at all while blighted, but her determination sharpened old steel. She didn't hesitate, not this time. She slashed through the beast, hacking it away to free the trapped spirits inside. They called out to her, begging for help and crying out in pain and willing it all to end.

Their cries almost brought her to her knees, but she couldn't afford to fail them. Not again. Yato was right: she hadn't been able to face up to those cries before, hadn't been able to put her shinki out of their misery even once they'd been corrupted and transformed into a phantom. This time, she would do it. She could do it. It might be breaking her, but she was strong, had put herself together stronger than before, would rebuild herself even stronger after.

The blade thrust into the mask, which cracked. What remained of the phantom exploded and vanished.

And even though all a god did was just, even though this had been the only right thing to do…

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

* * *

Bishamon leaned forward in her chair and watched Kazuma closely as he rattled off a status report on the mansion's repairs and the activities of the remaining shinki. She was relieved to see him physically recovered from the wound she had accidentally inflicted on him and glad that he had settled back into his role as her exemplar and started acting a little more normal around her again, but there was a persistent ache in her chest that she suspected came from him.

"Are you alright, Kazuma?" she asked.

The report withered in his throat and he blinked at her blankly before tilting his face down. His fingers caught on the edge of her desk and tightened.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked. "I apologize."

Bishamon sighed. "We're trying to be more open about that now, right? Just… It's not your fault, what happened to the Ma clan. If anything, it's–"

"It's not Yato's fault," Kazuma said tiredly. "I begged him to."

"–mine," she finished.

He looked back up at her. Behind his glasses, his eyes softened into something sadder. "We betrayed you, Veena," he said quietly. "Eventually, we turned our suspicions on each other and even began killing each other. It's really no wonder they became corrupted."

"We all made mistakes, I suppose."

"Yes… Veena, I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I just…"

"It's probably just as well. I think I needed someone to blame in order to cope… I might have turned on you instead, which wouldn't have been fair to you and I wouldn't have had your support to recover and rebuild. Better it was Yato."

Kazuma's face closed off and he darted a glance back at the closed door of the office before turning wary, guarded eyes on Bishamon. "I know you don't want to hear this, but…he's actually a pretty good person."

Bishamon was taken aback by his reaction, but realized ruefully that he probably had reason to be concerned about her response after she had exiled him for helping Yato before. She studied every tight, drawn line of his face and the uncertain yet steely light in his eyes. He was her guidepost and she trusted him, even though she couldn't say that she shared his apparent fondness for the god of calamity that had saved them. She wondered what he knew or had seen over the years to make him so sure, because it was more than just a sense of gratitude and indebtedness that had won him over.

"After you passed out, he offered to kill the ayakashi for me," she said suddenly. She watched carefully as his mouth contracted into a faint frown. "He said he was doing me a favor because I wasn't able to handle destroying what was left of my shinki last time. What do you make of that?"

Kazuma half-turned and angled his body towards the window behind them to frown out at the lawn. "I think…he probably did mean it as a favor rather than getting a dig in at you. He told me once, much later, that he can see bonds. Bonds between people, gods, shinki, memories. When those bonds fray, he cuts them. He said that my bond with you was still strong, unbreakable. He didn't say it, but…I think he thought it was something worth protecting. To him, it was a reset: clear away the corrupted bonds and let us start over with just the ones that remained strong.

"So perhaps what he was really offering was a chance to clear away the ruined bonds and keep the ones that were fraying but not irretrievable so that you could repair them. He seems to have softened over time… I think he's more willing to entertain the possibility of fixing what's damaged instead of just wiping it all out and starting over. He doesn't approve of your methods and thinks they're foolish, but I get the feeling that he respects the spirit of what you're trying to do with your shinki. Maybe he wanted to give that one more chance to see if you could pull it together this time.

"But I think it's good that you did it yourself. It was kind of him to offer, but I think you needed to protect and release who you could on your own. A way to move on, maybe. You took responsibility even though it was painful, because you're stronger than you were back then and you'll build yourself up even stronger still. You don't need to rely on him to fix your problems anymore—you can do it yourself. I'm sorry, Veena. I know it was hard, but I'm proud of you for doing it."

It was a different take, a deeper look into her one-time enemy than she'd ever had, but that wasn't really what Bishamon was interested in now. It might be something to dissect and think through later, but for now she just cared about Kazuma and the rest of her shinki and figuring out how to fix her mistakes to do things right this time around.

Proud? How could he be proud when she had brought her family to ruin again? As painful as it was to admit, the Ma clan had played a big part in bringing about its own demise. But the Ha clan? That was all on Bishamon.

"But what do I do now?" she asked, her voice a low rasp. "How do I save what's left of the Ha clan and make sure this doesn't happen again?"

Kazuma turned away from the window and reached over to tap a finger on the exchange diary lying on the desk in front of her. "This is a good start. We—all of us—have been working so hard to hide our own pain and needs in order not to hurt each other that we were all alone even with our family all around us. We can't— _you_ can't—do this alone, Veena. We need to do it together and help each other through our difficulties instead of hiding them away to struggle against them by ourselves.

"We'll reforge those fraying bonds until they're strong again, unbreakable. And when we add new ones, we'll make sure to build them strong and maintain them. That's how you build a family, Veena."

Bishamon swallowed hard and ran her eyes over the diary before searching Kazuma's face again. "You tried to warn me what would happen and encourage me to pay more attention to everyone, and I didn't listen."

"Veena…"

"You're my exemplar, Kazuma. Help me find my way and do it right this time. I can't do it by myself. Won't you guide me?"

Kazuma gave her a half-bow from his waist. "For as long as you'll have me."

The _'forever'_ on both their lips went unspoken.

"Thank you."

Kazuma offered Bishamon his hand. "We've been holed up in here for too long. Why don't we go see how everyone else is doing?"

Bishamon took his hand. They had to start somewhere, and just spending more time with her shinki and learning about them and giving them the attention they deserved was as good a first step as anything.

There were far fewer shinki than before bustling about the halls when she and Kazuma stepped outside the office, but the sorrow for those who were lost was, finally, eclipsed by the relief and happiness for those who remained. Bishamon wondered how she could have created an environment where everyone was so alone despite all their friends around them. She would not do it again.

This time, they would do it together.


End file.
